Citizen

Former state Sen. Howard Lee, a Democrat, who is also former chair of the N.C. Board of Education (also, former chair of the N.C. Utilities Commission and, back in the day, former mayor of Chapel Hill), moderated the debate today between DPI Superintendent June Atkinson, a Democrat seeking re-election, and John Tedesco, a Wake County school board member and the Republican nominee for DPI super. "We're fortunate to have two well-qualified candidates," Lee said.

The debate, shown below, lasted 50 minutes, including Lee's introduction. This was at the N.C. Alliance for Public Charter Schools convention in Concord. Lee, not coincidentally, is one-half of the eponymous couple for whom the proposed Howard and Lillian Lee Scholars Charter School is named. The school got a charter to open this fall, but it didn't meet the deadline for finding a facility, so it reapplied for 2013-14.